will find.

Every one knows these plain facts, but by no means every one has traced
their political importance. When a State is constituted thus, it is not
true that the lower classes will be wholly absorbed in the useful; on
the contrary, they do not like anything so poor. No orator ever made an
impression by appealing to men as to their plainest physical wants,
except when he could allege that those wants were caused by some one's
tyranny. But thousands have made the greatest impression by appealing
to some vague dream of glory, or empire, or nationality. The ruder sort
of men--that is, men at ONE stage of rudeness--will sacrifice all they
hope for, all they have, THEMSELVES, for what is called an idea--for
some attraction which seems to transcend reality, which aspires to
elevate men by an interest higher, deeper, wider than that of ordinary
life. But this order of men are uninterested in the plain, palpable
ends of government; they do not prize them; they do not in the least
comprehend how they should be attained. It is very natural, therefore,
that the most useful parts of the structure of government should by no
means be those which excite the most reverence. The elements which
excite the most easy reverence will be the THEATRICAL elements--those
which appeal to the senses, which claim to be embodiments of the
greatest human ideas, which boast in some cases of far more than human
origin. That which is mystic in its claims; that which is occult in its
mode of action; that which is brilliant to the eye; that which is seen
vividly for a moment, and then is seen no more; that which is hidden
and unhidden; that which is specious, and yet interesting, palpable in
its seeming, and yet professing to be more than palpable in its
results; this, howsoever its form may change, or however we may define
it or describe it, is the sort of thing--the only sort--which yet comes
home to the mass of men. So far from the dignified parts of a
constitution being necessarily the most useful, they are likely,
according to outside presumption, to be the least so; for they are
likely to be adjusted to the lowest orders--those likely to care least
and judge worst about what IS useful.

There is another reason which, in an old constitution like that of
England, is hardly less important. The most intellectual of men are
moved quite as much by the circumstances which they are used to as by
their own will. The active voluntary part of a man is